I'm fairly new at griddlers and have been having a couple of major problems that stop me mid-puzzle, or keep me from even trying to do a particular one. I've read the instructions and even searched and read instructions on other sites, as well as "e-how" and "wiki". Unfortunately, the puzzles used as examples are easy to solve and tell me what I already know. It seems that there are no puzzles that use my issues as an example.

All instructions I've read say to skip a space between same colors, but I'm finding that rarely does anyone do that except for in the b&w puzzles. I've even seen it both ways in an individual puzzle - skipping and not skipping. Is there a reason for not skipping? because it's confusing for a newbie.

#1) Is there a reason why people make the puzzles with many same-color clues? EX: a block that reads: 2 3 9 7 1 1 1 1 4 all in the same color? Why don't they just put "29" of the color? A good example of this is puzzle #15921 Baby Duck.

#2) Is there a reason that people use the background color as a clue color? I've begun skipping these puzzles because invariably I've done one or more rows or columns wrong and it's frustrating to try to find the error by switching from clicking on the clue to right-clicking for the background.

I hope I've explained coherently. I'm probably being way too picky, but these are things that interfere with my enjoyment of griddlers.

@#1: Where in this puzzle do you see a row or column with same colour clues in a row? I really don't see it.

But to answer your question:

EX: a block that reads: 2 3 9 7 1 1 1 1 4 all in the same color? Why don't they just put "29" of the color?

It means that between every clue there should be at least one background square, this way they create a picture that doesn't only contain lines. This skipping of a square is only nescessary in B&W puzzles or when there are 2 or more clues of the same colour next to each other.

@#2: There is a clue colour that is called 'evil-grey' = the same ccolour grey as the background colour. People use it because it fits in their picture. However you can change the colour to whatever colour you like by double clicking on the clue. This opens the Change color screen. This is a very usefull option as sometimes people use almost the same shades of a colour in one puzzle e.g. #93540 the background is almost the same as one of the clue colours, two of the cluecolours seem to be black but are actually two different colours.I think everyone has made mistakes because of two colours that are almost the same. (Or am I the only one....?)

One more question: In the example I gave, there's lots of yellow, and I'm assuming that you see several shades of yellow. Correct?

My monitor is only showing me one shade of yellow...a deep buttercup yellow. If you're seeing several shades, that means there's an issue with my computer, and I don't know how to fix that. That would also explain why I'm getting some odd colored animals. :roll:

I had a look at the little duck .. yes, there are several shades of yellow in the Griddler .. you could try changing the clues to give some contrasting colours to see if that makes a more workable Griddler .. and at least then you would know it was/or was not your computer set up .. :roll:

I'm not a computer expert .. but I'm thinking things like, an old monitor, colour set up is wrong, or dare I say you could actually have a very little known form of colour blindness yourself .. colour blindness is not just muddling red with green .. it can also be distinguishing similar shades of blues or yellows ..

Hope you can sort out the problem soon .. as it must be spoiling your fun with the coloured Griddlers .. :|

Thanks for responding, patootie. Yeah, my monitor is, I'm guessing, maybe 6 years old, give or take a year. Don't know if that's old or not, but I've been having trouble with my NVIDIA settings so it's probably my computer/monitor. Changing colors has helped a lot.

I've had this issue before. Usually when there are two shades of 'white.' When it seems like there is an error in the puzzle I'll change one of the colors and WA LA! Magically a different solution appears. I suppose if I paid more attention to the list of colors on the left I would notice when there are VERY similar colors before I ran into trouble....